The Waiting Game

by J. L. Fynn

We each folded a few pieces of clothing in silence before Maggie spoke again. “I found some plants in the woods that made a wonderful tea. I have a feeling that it might cure an upset stomach. You wanna try it?”

  “My stomach feels fine,” I said, patting my midsection.

  “Well, the next time it doesn’t, you let me know.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She threw a shirt at me, and it plopped down right on the top of my head. Jimmy Boy looked over and gigged which made me smile. He laughed just like his mam.

  “God damn it, Chris!” Jim’s voice came from the office off the living room. Maggie and I shot each other pointed looks, but hushed up quick so we could listen in on Jim’s conversation. “I have to go to my pop’s house tonight. I can’t exactly tell him I can’t make it because my boy—” Jim was cut off with a huff. “I know that, but you don’t understand. My pop would never understand about us. He—” Pause. “I do too, Chris. That’s why I introduced you to my wife and her…Tommy. So you knew it was all for show. We could—” Pause. “And how would you expect me to do that? I can’t just up and leave the Village.” Long Pause. “New Orleans is out of the question. My pop’d find me, and who knows—” Pause. “Look, I just can’t. Please, don’t do this. We can figure something out.” Pause. “Chris, don’t.” The sound of Jim slamming down the receiver echoed through the house.

  Maggie and I sat stunned in the living room, gaping at each other for a long moment until Jim stomped into the room. “Break it up, lovers. Maggie, get Jimmy ready. We’re going over to Pop’s house.” I stood up. “You’re not coming, Tommy. She’s my wife, no matter how often you two sit here under my roof playing house.”

  I hadn’t stood because I thought I’d go with them; I’d planned to leave, get out of their way, but the words still stung.

  Maggie looked scared and even Jimmy Boy had stopped smiling in his playpen. Jim was right. In a small way, Maggie and Jimmy Boy were mine, but in all the ways that mattered, they weren’t. They were his, and I was just playing make-believe.

  And that killed me.

  I walked out the front door without saying goodbye and crossed the twenty yards to my trailer. I lived close—so close—to the rest of them, but I wasn’t part of their family. And I never really would be.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  I LAY IN bed, flipping from one side to the other for the thousandth time. I’d lain down at eight o’clock hoping to fall asleep and put this day behind me¸ but my mind wouldn’t stop churning. All I’d managed to do for the last three hours was work my blankets into a twisted mess. Just like everything else in my life.

  I couldn’t stop thinking about Maggie and Jim and Jimmy Boy, spinning them around and around in my head. I tried to piece together a way for all of us to be happy, but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t see it.

  I sat up. I’d had enough of all of this thinking. I had to talk to Jim. I’d heard him and Maggie come home an hour ago, and now was as good a time as any. I pulled on a pair of jeans and a shirt and walked over to his house. I let myself in and noticed a light on in Jim’s office. The door was cracked slightly, so I knocked.

  “What? I told you to leave me alone.” Jim’s voice sounded raspy, as if he’d once been crying but had long ago stopped.

  “It’s me.” I called through the door.

  “Tommy?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Stop talking to me through the door, moron.”

  I pushed the door open. Jim sat behind his desk with his feet up, drinking a glass of whiskey. He held out a second glass to me wordlessly, and I nodded so he poured me a couple fingers of the brown liquid.

  I sat down at the chair in front of his desk and sipped my whiskey, not exactly sure what to say. Jim didn’t rush me, not saying anything either.

  “This isn’t going to work, is it?” I said finally.

  “Nope. Sure isn’t.”

  “Are you angry at me?” I asked. The look in his eyes was hollow, his emotions difficult to read.

  “For fucking my wife, you mean?”

  “You know it wasn’t like that,” I said, already half out of my seat.

  “Sit down. It was like that, but I’m not mad at you. I said you could do it. But how could this have ever worked? I’d be the third wheel in my house forever. Jimmy’s only one now, but soon he’ll be big enough to understand. How are we supposed to explain to him that his mama’s whoring around with his daddy’s best friend?”

  Anger filled my chest at the word whore being used anywhere near Maggie, but I got the point. The last few months had been a dream. But that’s all they’d been. There was no way we could make this work long term.

  But still. “I love her, Jim,” I said quietly, looking down at my hands. Tears filled my eyes before I could stop them, and a single one dripped on my knuckles.

  “It really sucks when you can’t be with the person you love, doesn’t it Tommy?”

  “It really does.” I knew that in a strange way, he got what I was feeling more than anyone else in the world. He understood my position, and I finally understood his. Although, honestly, I wished I didn’t.

  “I need to put my past behind me,” Jim said, taking a long pull from his tumbler. “For a little bit there I thought—” His tone was wistful, but he cut himself off and cleared his throat. When he spoke again, his voice was controlled, emotionless. “But I’m a Traveler. And a man. And I have certain responsibilities. I can’t let you live my life for me forever.”

  My shoulders shook and more tears fell from my eyes. I knew he was right. This was never meant to last. There was no way that Maggie and I could ever be. And now there was a child in the mix. My child. It would just confuse him to see Maggie and me together.

  “I better go,” I said, standing.

  “Yeah, that’s for the best,” Jim said. “As soon as you can.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  I LIFTED THE trailer off its cinder blocks and hitched it up on the truck. Doing this would’ve been easier with a second person, but I’d grown adept at doing it myself, and I couldn’t bear asking Jim to do one more thing for me. He’d already given me too much.

  I secured the hitch, then went inside the trailer to tie down a few things before I drove away. I wasn’t sure where I was going to go exactly—it wasn’t quite time to head out on the road yet—but I knew I needed to get out of the Village. Maybe forever.

  There were a few other clans like ours I could join. Or I could even go straight. I had a good amount of money saved up. Not enough to start a world empire or anything, but enough to get myself a settled place. I briefly considered joining one of the straight clans, but decided against that almost immediately. If I was going to leave the game, I was leaving Traveler life completely. It was our rules that came between me and Maggie, and I was done with those rules.

  When I opened the door again Maggie was standing in front of me. I had no idea how long she’d been there, but she didn’t look poised to knock. Panic ran through me. If she begged me to stay, I didn’t know that I’d have the strength to leave. The love I felt for her was an almost palpable pain at the best of times. Right now it was an agony I felt in every cell.

  “We need to talk,” she said, pushing past me into the trailer.

  I sat across from her at the small dining table. The table where this all started. “So you’re leaving?” she asked, not allowing any emotion into her voice.

  “Yeah.”

  “And you weren’t even going to ask me to come along?”

  “Would you?” I asked, a note of hopefulness in my voice.

  “I wouldn’t.”

  “Then why’d you ask?”

  “Just wanted to see if you were really the eejit I always accused you of being. You know we couldn’t run away together. What would we do—go out on the road alone? Without the clan’s protection, it’d be less than a year before you’d get arrested for something. I know what the women do in Pop’s house, taking calls from men on the road. How t
hey pass that information around. Without the clan, you’d have no hope. We’d have no hope.”

  “So?” I said. “I could get a settled job. Go straight. I was already thinking about that before you showed up here.”

  “And how would you do that? You have a what? Fifth grade education? You’ve never worked a real job in your life. Face it, Tommy. You’re a Traveler. It’s in your blood. You can’t settle down. And anyway, what about Jimmy Boy? Jim’s his father.”

  “You know that isn’t true,” I said angrily.

  “It is in every way that’s important. It’s true in the eyes of the clan. It’s true to little Jimmy when he calls him da. You think Pop Reilly’s going to let you run off with his son’s wife and his grandson? You think he’d ever let us live in peace? What kind of life would that be for Jimmy? Always running. Always hiding.” She took a breath and folded her hands on the table in front of her. “I love you, Tommy. When I’m with you I feel like I’m at a great height—you know that tingling feeling you get in your fingers and toes on the edge of a cliff? That’s how you make me feel. I could get lost in you, but I can’t let myself. I have a son to think of.”

  I grabbed her hand across the table and squeezed it tight. I wanted nothing more than Maggie and I to be together, but this was the reason I loved her so much. She was loyal, and strong, and would always do the right thing no matter how much it hurt her. She’d always protect our child. And for that I owed her everything.

  The least I could do was leave. I drew her up to a standing position and wrapped my arms around her. I felt her tears on my neck, but she made no noise. I wanted to pull her mouth up to mine, but I knew if I kissed her now, I could never stop.

  “I should go,” I said, releasing her and taking a step back.

  She stared at me for a long moment and then nodded. Without another word, she turned and left my trailer. I waited for a full five minutes before I dared to go back outside and climb in the truck. If she was still out there, if I saw her again before I left, there was no way I’d be able to make myself go.

  I’d been able to keep it together the entire drive down the private road, but as soon as I pulled away from the Village, tears poured down my face. I had no idea where I was going, what I was going to do, or, more importantly, if I’d ever see Maggie again. It was like my life was starting over and ending all at the same time.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  I JUGGLED AN armload of books as I dug in my coat pocket for my keys. March in Iowa was still pretty miserable, and as I continued the search for my keys, I suppressed a pang of longing for the 70 degree days the clan was no doubt enjoying down in Louisiana.

  I’d done my damnedest to forget about the Village in the two years since I’d left, but keeping thoughts of home out of my mind only worked when I was actively focused on something else. Something like the construction work I did during the day, or the business courses I was taking at the community college at night. Even so, sometimes my mind wandered south, to Travelers, to Jim and the baby, to Maggie. Always to Maggie.

  The phone started ringing inside the apartment just as I found my keys and unlocked the door. I sprinted across the 500 square feet of my efficiency and slid to a stop by the counter that separated the kitchen from the rest of the living space. Not knowing who to expect on the other end of the line, I tossed the keys onto the counter and lifted the phone from its cradle.

  “Hello?”

  “It’s about time you answered,” a familiar voice said.

  I searched my memory for where I’d heard it before. The acrid smell of a truck stop pay-phone booth came to mind, and a name to match the voice came soon after. “Mary?”

  “You always were a smart one.” Apparently the advisor was still charming as ever.

  “How did you get this number?” I’d only had the phone turned on when I’d enrolled in school back in September. They didn’t do much digging when you gave them a forged high school diploma, but if your phone number didn’t check out, they asked questions. Go figure.

  “You act as if you were doing a good job hiding yourself away, Tommy. Not that we couldn’t have found you even if you had.”

  She had a point. I’d used a fake name, but it was an old stand-by I’d used a million times before. And even if I’d chosen a new one, Travelers were a resourceful bunch. “Fine. So what do you want?”

  “I don’t want anything; I just make the phone calls, remember? But your dear old friend would like a word.”

  My stomach tensed. I hadn’t spoken to Jim since before I pulled out of the Village, hadn’t even said goodbye. Why would he be calling after all this time?

  “So, why am I talking to you?”

  “He asked me to make sure this was a good number, and to see how you ‘sounded’. I’ll be sure to tell him you sound like the same surly asshole you always were.”

  I was feeling surly, but it wasn’t the message I wanted passed along to Jim. “Tell him to call when he can.” I hung up without waiting for a response.

  I needed a cigarette and a stiff drink. I circled around the counter into the kitchenette and pulled open a drawer. A crumpled pack of cigarettes rested in a glass ashtray. I set both on the counter before I tipped the pack and gave it a shake. A lighter clattered into the dish. I pulled a cigarette from the pack and jammed it between my lips. As soon as it was lit I remembered how long ago I’d purchased this pack. The stale tobacco smoke curled under my nose and burned my throat. I stubbed the cigarette out rather than take another drag and reached for the bottle of whiskey in the cabinet instead. I didn’t bother with a glass. I’d swallowed my second swig when the phone rang.

  I stared at it. In two years no one from the Village had made any attempt to contact me. Not Jim, and not Maggie. For the first year or so I fought the urge to call home almost every day. I wanted to know how my friend was doing. I wanted to hear Maggie’s voice. I wanted to find out if Jimmy Boy had started to talk, and how tall he’d gotten.

  But each day the urge got a little easier to fight, and soon I was sure that my leaving was the best thing I could’ve done. If I didn’t know what was happening at home, I could imagine a happy life for the three of them. A life that didn’t include me.

  The ringing phone was about to end all that. My hand shook as I reached for it.

  “Hello?” I answered, my voice breaking. I cleared my throat.

  “Tommy.” Jim blew out a long breath that crackled over the phone line. “It’s good to hear your voice.”

  “Yours too.” My mind raced with all the things I wanted to say. None of them seemed right, but I finally settled on, “How’s it going?”

  Jim howled with laughter. Almost hysterically so. I frowned at the phone, wondering how many swigs of whiskey he’d helped himself to before making this call. Obviously a few more than me.

  When he’d finally gotten himself under control, he spoke again. “Two years without a word and you ask how it’s going? Succinct to a fault. Same old Tommy.”

  Drunk and taking the piss. Same old Jim. I shrugged as if we were sitting in his living room instead of separated by a thousand miles.

  “It’s going good. More than good actually,” he said, his tone now more serious.

  “I’m glad to hear it. I’ve thought about you a lot and hoped you were doing okay.”

  “I’m real sure I’m the one you were thinking about,” he said sarcastically.

  I couldn’t tell whether he was angry or teasing me. “No,” I said after a pause. “Not the only one.”

  “She’s good too,” he said. “Wait ’til you see her.”

  “See her? What are you talking about?” I glanced at the door, my skin prickling with nervous anticipation as if she might walk through it any second.

  “That’s why I’m calling,” Jim said. “Tommy, it’s time for you to come home.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  NOTHING HAD CHANGED. Not the rows of doublewides, or the lawn statues. Not the shiny sedans and pickup trucks that
occupied driveways in front of every home. Even though I'd driven through the night from Iowa, I'd waited until nightfall to roll back into the Village. The fewer reunions I had the better. I couldn't imagine there'd be too many people excited to see me anyway. My tiny trailer rattled along the road behind my truck, and I was grateful for the smooth macadam that kept the noise to a minimum. Still, more than a few curtains pulled back as my headlights swept by.

  I pulled my truck to a stop in Jim's driveway and stared at the house through the windshield. This was a bad idea. Seeing them again—seeing her again—wouldn't bring anything but trouble. I'd made the right decision two years ago, and as painful as it was to leave Maggie and my son behind, we both knew it had to be done. Plus, she didn't try to stop me or come after me. That had to mean something.

  I drummed my fingers against the steering wheel, debating whether to open the door. I couldn’t sit outside forever, and I wasn’t about to turn around and run back to Iowa after driving all the way down here, but I couldn't make myself reach for the door handle either. My arrival hadn’t gone unnoticed at this house either, though, and the front door swung open. Jim moved from the porch to my truck in less time than it took for me to open my door, and soon he was pulling me from my seat into a crushing hug. The pungent combination of whisky and cigarettes clung to his clothes and hair, but I was happy to smell it again after all this time. I clapped him on the back.

  “It’s damn good to see you Tommy boy,” he said once he’d let me go.

  “It’s good to see you too. You look,” I paused, taking him in. He had dark circles under his eyes, and his shoulders seemed permanently hunched. He looked ten years older. “You look good.”

  “I’m feeling better than ever. Seriously, things are looking up, which is exactly why you needed to come back. I’m telling you, we are on the verge of something big, something huge. Bigger than either of us has ever seen.”

  “Yeah?” He was talking so fast I could barely follow. “What’s that?”